Daily Archives: September 16, 2014

Don’t get me wrong: Andrew Gimson is one of the saner Tories. He is spoiled by being corralled into that particular nest of iniquity. His piece, today, is typically impressionistic — much of it little more than vox pop stuff:

Three things shocked me as a Unionist visiting Glasgow. The first was the realisation that although, in the course of several hours’ conversation in George Square yesterday afternoon, I met a considerable number of people who are going to vote No on Thursday, the people who are going to vote Yes are on average younger and better looking. This is always a good sign for a campaign. Success, fashion and beauty generally go together. Many wearers of the Yes badge made it look quite chic.

Let’s get his third point out of the way. Well established for anyone who has half an ear has been:

… the vindictive tone of some of the speakers. Like every other commentator, I do not know what will happen on Thursday. But if there is a No vote, the most difficult task may only just be beginning: to find some way of calming the passions which motivate so many Yes voters. For many of them, this referendum represents a longed-for and unexpected chance to take revenge on the hated Thatcher and Blair.

These Yes voters want so much to believe that their egalitarian, state-directed version of ethical socialism can work in Scotland, although the English are not even prepared to try it. Who can convince them that such policies would lead to economic collapse? Or must the perilous experiment be tried?

There’s a dangerous conflation there: to be opposed to the hated Thatcher and Blair does not put one anywhere near an egalitarian, state-directed version of ethical socialism. On the contrary: it makes one an unthinking reactionary bigot. That, though, is how the SNP has framed too much of its argument.

His second point is the one that needs unscrambling:

In Glasgow, the greater [than “nationalism”, per se] threat to the Union comes from socialism, and from people who think of themselves as socialists. Romantic love of socialism remains strong. This is a painfully obvious point, but one I had managed to miss while following events from London.

My, my: Mr Gimson seems not aware of the legacy from the likes of (in alphabetical order) James Connolly, Helen Crawfurd, Willie Gallacher, Keir Hardie, Tom Johnston, Davie Kirkwood, Ramsay Macdonald, James MacDougall, Agnes and John Maclean, Jimmy Maxton, Jimmy Reid, Manny Shinwell, John Wheatley … and a cast of thousands. He should betake himself to a decent bookshop, or library and spend a couple or three hours with Maggie Craig on the history of Red Clydeside.

Let me concede that Andrew Gimson may have a point with:

the greater threat to the Union comes from … people who think of themselves as socialists.

But he should have a word with his redoubtable Missus before he fills that omitted [ … ] with: from socialism.

Had he looked further he would have found the Left in Scotland is not voting “Yes”. Try the leaflet illustrated here, and he — and readers of ConHome — might find bits with which they are surprisingly in agreement.

Similarly, there are many Scots who have heard of James Connolly, and even read his stuff. In this context, a true socialist would hark back to Connolly’s 1897 essay:

If you remove the English army to-morrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain.

England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs.

England would still rule you to your ruin, even while your lips offered hypocritical homage at the shrine of that Freedom whose cause you had betrayed.

The main difference, of course, is that — even absent those evil “English” “capitalists” — El Presidente Salmond is already sold out to Murdoch, Trump, Russian plutocrats buying enough real estate to earn a passport, Asian millionaires renting by the week the Highland deer-stalking experience, Texan oilmen …

The jejune-but-promising inheritor of Ben Brogan’s mantle is Stephen Bush. Here is a clip of today’s Morningbriefing:

TWEETS & TWITS

@JeremyCliffe: Today Lab has issued four statements bashing evil Tories. Couldn’t they have packed it in, if only for one measly, nation-changing week?

Cliffe, by the by, is an apparatchik at The Economist. The Economist is commonly believed to be capable of more than single-track thought-processes.

Err, no.

Absent Scotland (about six million of ’em), and there’s still fifty-eight million of us for whom life, political life, and the horrors of Toryism go on.

Make Philip Hammond and Eric Pickles shut up and sit down, make the Passport Office behave and not profiteer at the expense of ordinary citizens’ distress (all of whom also feature in today’s Morningbriefing), and there would be less to complain about. Right, Stephen?